Hello! My name is Lisette. I am a new volunteer here at Salisbury Museum, and I have been asked to contribute to the museum’s new blog. I thought I’d begin my first post by telling you a little bit about myself and what I am going to be doing at the museum.

I am a postgraduate student at the University of Leicester, where I am currently studying for my MA in Museum Studies. As part of my course I am on a two month curatorial internship at Salisbury Museum, where I will be helping to curate the next temporary exhibition, and keeping you all updated on developments at the museum via this blog!

I have joined the museum at a very exciting time. Salisbury Museum was recently awarded £1.8 million by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) towards the development of a new archaeology gallery. The museum’s collections include some of the most significant archaeological finds in Britain, including artefacts from the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, the Pitt Rivers Wessex collection, and the Amesbury Archer. The new gallery will reveal treasures from deep prehistory up until 1220, and unearth the stories of the archaeologists that discovered them. The gallery will enable visitors to discover important artefacts that the museum has previously been unable to display due to a lack of space and security, and to rediscover old favourites from the collection. The development of the new gallery is the first part of an ambitious Master Plan that will see the museum completely overhauled, and displays brought into the 21st Century. The new gallery is set to open in Spring 2014.

As some of you who have recently visited the museum may know, the archaeology collections are currently packed away while the new gallery is being built. In total 3,200 objects were packed away with the help of 39 volunteers who contributed a staggering 827 hours of their time – but more about that in my next post.

The temporary exhibition that I am helping to curate will reveal the process of developing this new archaeology gallery, offering the viewer a chance to discover a little more about the inner workings of the museum. Visitors will also get a chance to see some of the project staff’s favourite objects from the archaeology collections and discover why they chose them. The temporary exhibition can be viewed at the museum between 12th October – 18th January 2014.

Having arrived at the museum in the middle of this mammoth project, it was thought that it might be fun for me to catch up on everything that has been happening via a blog. In the coming weeks I will be talking to staff and volunteers about the various stages of this exciting project to redevelop Salisbury Museum!